Are there tasks that you find yourself doing over and over again? Or things that you know could just be a bit simpler? Michelle Nedelec is here to share how to think about automating tasks so that you can free up more time in your day and your teams day!

What you'll learn:

→ how automation can make an impact in your day to day.
→ what tasks to automate.
→ how to reverse engineer your big projects.

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[6:57] What Should You Automate Automate the things you do three times or more. Use automation if you are sending the same email or doing the same tasks over and over again. Automation can also be used as talking points at in-person events.
[11:32] Start At The End Decide what you want your end result to be first. Then you can come up with a plan of how to accomplish those goals and send out the correct message to your audience.
[21:16] Keep It Real You may have to use automated messages when trying to reach out to a large number of people. Use an honest approach when recording your automated messages.
[25:51] Write Down Your Day Track all of the things you do in a day. Figure out which tasks you can automate or delegate so you can do the things that you do best. 

Full Transcript

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] What comes to mind when you think about automating in your business? Sometimes I think overwhelm. Sometimes I think in personalization, sometimes I think ease and flow, but it can all be overwhelming. And I usually think about automation when it comes to marketing tasks. Today I have Michelle Nedelec on my podcast, and she's sharing all things automation. And she taught me a mindset thing or two about how to think about automation in offline situations, not just online, and with your entire business altogether. And she's giving you some great tips and ideas on how to get started, where to start, and how to avoid the pitfalls of all of the tech and money. International Best Selling Author Michelle Nedelec is an expert in entrepreneurialism and the founder of Awareness Strategies. She's run her own series of companies for over 22 years and for over 15 years has been helping sales reps entrepreneurs and executives to continually double their profits and revenues. She not only has what it takes to help her clients build a million dollar business, but she does it time and time again. Michelle particularly loves to talk about marketing automation, systems integration, and support both on and off the stage. She teaches the key components of scaling a business strategy, systems, support, and state of mind. So you know how to continually elevate all four components to build a healthy, thriving business. For the past six years, she's been focusing on helping entrepreneurs bring their businesses online from conceptualization to den for you IT automation. She also happens to have a great sense of humor and a love for stilettos. There's some great examples that she shares in this episode that I think will have you thinking about the way that you set up automation a little bit differently. It doesn't need to be overwhelming, it doesn’t need to be scary, but just needs to be there to help you save time, money, and be the best that your organization can be so you can serve as many people as possible. But before we get into this episode, it is brought to you by our digital marketing therapy sessions. If you need some time with me one on one, but don't need to bring in a full consultant. These digital marketing therapy sessions are great for you, go to thefirstclick.net/officehours. Book your time now. And let's get moving on some of these digital marketing strategies to help you keep your business and your organization moving forward. Especially now that we're in the really busy holiday and giving season. Again, that's thefirstclick.net/officehours. Let's get into the episode. 

[INTRO] You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. And each week, I bring you tips from myself and other experts, as well as hot seats with small business owners and entrepreneurs to demystify digital marketing and get you on your way to generating more leads and growing your business. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Hey, everybody, please join me in welcoming Michelle Nedelec to the podcast. Michelle, thanks for being here today.

[Michelle Nedelec] Thank you for having me. I'm super excited.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah, this is gonna be awesome, because I think automation is a game changer in organizations. But why do you think that automation is scary and gets people all nervous?

[Michelle Nedelec] I think because it's based on computers, and most people freak out about computers. How they work and don't want to know how to use them.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah, well, and I feel like I hear people talking about all the different things that you can do. And then I automatically go to I don't have all this fancy software, or these crazy data people to help me do it or like all these IT people. I mean, it doesn't have to be that complicated.

[Michelle Nedelec] Right? You know, I'm not Coca Cola, I don’t have a billion dollar budget to be able to spend on this and, and figure it out. And I think the worst part too, is that because people think, especially when they're starting out, and they don't have a lot of spare money to spend on stuff and go, Hey, let's try this. Let's try this is more of a conceptual idea sort of thing. And when you're a startup, it's not, hey, let's throw money at this and see whether or not it works. And I think that's part of the problem, too. So we ended up doing things like getting our nephew to go and figure out how to get stuff done. They are notoriously fantastic at just trying things, whether they know how to do them or not. And it can be very intimidating, especially when there's a lot of people that are really good at marketing. And they'll go hey, you need to have this thing because this tactic is going to be the tactic that saves your business. And it's completely not true. They're just trying to sell something. So what we do is we help people kind of back up the bus and go, Okay, what are you trying to achieve? What's the strategy behind what you're doing? And learn to ask way more questions than you're putting money towards those decisions. So that when you do put money towards those decisions that you know that it's going to get you at least from point A to point B if not, you know, C D or E.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, there's so many tech solutions out there that if you just start to go after, I need a tech solution, you'll go down a rabbit hole that will lead you nowhere.

[Michelle Nedelec] Right? And, there's more coming out every day. So we work with a software that's been around for like 15 years, and it's got notoriety, it's got robustness to it. And it's awesome for techies, like techies can get in there and they can make stuff happen. And so we can support the creatives and the spontaneous and the idea thinkers and visionaries in being able to fulfill their ideas. But a lot of these companies are just going, Hey, that's too complicated. We just want to make a simplified version of it, and we're going to sell this aspect of it, which sounds great, and is it less expensive? Yeah, it's way less expensive. But we all have tons of software sitting around on our desktop, or hidden somewhere in our computer that we know we spent money on and we kind of forget what it does. And we haven't had time to look at it. And, you know, along with those courses, and, and and, yeah, so that perpetuates everywhere. And that's not just unique to small business. That also happens in big business, because you know, somebody has great ideas like, Yeah, this is awesome. And then nobody has the wherewithal or the team to be able to put it in place. So it is systemic, it is not focused just on startups. So what we do is we help businesses to simplify their tech to the point that they're focusing on the one thing that will get them to the place where they're making money, that can get them to the next place, that can get them to the next place. Because oftentimes they're going, I just need to make $1,000. And then I can make $2,000. And once I made $2,000, then I can make $4,000. And it becomes kind of, it's upward, but it's still a very linear expression. And what they don't realize is when they have the right team with them, you're going from, hey, I don't have anything, but we're going to put things in place, and we're going to make 4000. And then we're gonna make 8000. Like, and then it shoots up faster, because there's a plan behind it. And it's not just a wish and a prayer.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So what kinds of things might people want to automate?

[Michelle Nedelec] Great question, the things you want to automate the things that you do three times or more. And my dad used to have an expression once as an accident twice as a mistake three times it's a habit. And he was getting that it was on, he was telling me because it was on the bad side of life. But, same thing also happens on the good side of life in business. So when you do something, once you have that spontaneous reaction to it, and, and it's fun, and it's exciting, if you do it again, you're honing in on that message, and you're going, Hey, that worked twice. Awesome, this is great. Once it works three times, again, that's a habit. And now you want to figure out a way to either, if it's a bad thing, you want to delete it, if it's a good thing, you want to figure out how to duplicate it, or you want to figure out how to automate it. So oftentimes, people will write the same email over and over again, or they'll answer the same question over again, or they'll onboard a client in the exact same way over and over again. And I start with just make videos of that, like if you're, especially if you're doing it on Zoom, it’s super easy to hit record video of it, and then put some bumpers on the end and call it your onboarding video, say, Hey, we're super excited that you signed up with us, here's how this is gonna go. And that exact same conversation you've been having over and over again, now you have it on video, and you can send it to people so that they can watch it when they're comfortable with it. And they can go back to it and remind themselves what they've signed up for, which is awesome. So it makes it easier to figure out what you can automate. And if you can't automate it for some weird and bizarre reason, then you can start to look at, hey, can I get somebody else to do this, and it is a system. So whether it's sending somebody else out to a networking event, and saying, Okay, this is exactly what I say, go and say this, and then just go and make friends and you'll be fine. And at least that way, especially if they're nervous, and they don't know what to say at a networking event, if they've never been to one, they're just doing you a favor, then they have an idea of what to say. And they have an idea of what works. Because if they start saying weird stuff at your networking events, and everybody's going like, I thought you guys did that. Yeah, we do. She got nervous, sorry.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah, I love this because you're talking about automation, from an offline perspective as well, not just from a techie perspective. And I love the examples that you just shared, are not like crazy tools that you have to go out and invest in. It's literally just how do I make the best use of my time? What are the things that I can share? And we'll link up in the show notes because the two examples that you just said, you know, we did an episode awhile ago on creating a promo kit, which is just like you said, all the messaging that everybody talks about, and we also did an episode on like networking events and having better quality conversations. So I'll link those up in the show notes. But I hadn't, which is weird. hadn't even thought about offline automation in the person to person space.

[Michelle Nedelec] Oh, absolutely. Oftentimes, especially when we get really good out what the message is. So initially, when we start a business, it's an idea that we have. The visionary has kind of gone, hey, I think we should do this, this would be kind of cool. And we ended up having like six different conversations with six people. But we noticed their reaction, who leans in, who goes, Hey, that's a great idea, hey, I want to know more. And subconsciously, we attach to that answer that we gave them. And then when somebody else asks, we give that same response, again, because we like the endorphins that we got from the first time, which is fabulous, that makes for an unconscious competent. And that's not a bad thing, that's a great thing, when you can figure out what that is, or you can record it and give it to somebody else. That makes it a repeatable system that works, you're creating what we call conversions. Now in the digital world, those conversions can start to apply to your organic social media, which is awesome. It can apply to your paid digital media, which is awesome, it can apply to kind of all of the aspects of your business that you want. So you'll notice, there's a lot of companies out there, the more established ones, that are still using kind of older videos and evergreen programs, because they work, they got the commercials, and they're still doing the thing. And if it's not broke, don't fix it. So they're still using the thing. So if you're brand new in this, absolutely, don't worry about it, just keep recording, because if it works, you're gonna keep using it. It doesn't matter what you sound like, doesn't matter what you look like, if it converts, keep using it. And if it doesn't work, then great. You just scrap it and you try again and do another one.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Okay. So when we think about like, we're in the startup phase, we're automating. I love the things that you just talked about, because they're not super techy, they're not super expensive. But at a certain point, we need to automate more tasks to grow and scale. So as we think about like, I always like to reverse engineer my sales funnels or my donor funnels and like kind of start at the end result and work its way backward. Do you think that that's a good kind of way to approach what tech you might need to integrate in order to create some of those automations?

[Michelle Nedelec] Absolutely. It’s one of the best ways and in fact, I don't know if there's another way that you can do that makes it effective. So the benefit of starting with the end in mind and working backwards is that you start to understand the complexity of it. So one of the biggest issues I have with most businesses, and most ironically, engineering firms, is that they tend not to go through their clients' ideal journey and figure out kind of what does the flow of this look like. So I compare it to traffic, when you're driving down the highway, you really want to have the traffic signs before the turn off. I know that sounds kind of obvious. But next time you're driving around, you're going to notice there's a lot of traffic signs that are actually after the turn off. Because it seemed like the most convenient place to put it, there was more room there in the little triangle between the turn off. So they put it there. But what that says to the driver going down is okay, this turn off has happened now I see the sign. And when you're doing your programs, you want to make sure that you realize that just because you've been inundated with your information for the last six months, and you know this inside, out and backwards, they don't have a clue, they haven't seen any of this, they have no idea what the name of your talk is, they have no idea what the name of your company is, they have no idea what your name is. And all three of those could be very confusing to them. So you want to make sure that when they start off that they are going Hey, how's it going? Do you have this problem? Great. Come on in, we've got some stuff for you. And it becomes very inviting and very first time ask. So but the only way you can figure out kind of where they go after that once they walked into the door is by figuring out where do you want them to get to in the end. Because if you've ever taken a tour of somebody's house, you can get stopped in any room very quickly. And you're just standing there talking, and the tour doesn't carry on. When you're doing that in business, you want to make sure that they're getting to wherever the party is. So if the party is in the backyard at the patio, you want to make sure that the tour ends up in the backyard at the party. Same thing happens with say you're having a three day event. And you're for whatever reason you're going okay, people aren't really getting what the three day event is. So we have to do some education on it first. So what kind of education is going to entice people to come to this three day event? What kind of information do they need before that in order to be enticed into the information package? Okay, what did they need before that to be able to get there? So it could be something as easy as like, I don't know about you guys, but we have the SPCA in town. And the SPCA has fundraiser events. And fundraiser events, although fun, if you say hey, we're having a fundraiser, a lot of people go, do I really want to go to another fundraiser? I don't have money. I don't want to do it. I'm gonna have to dress up, and you want to be able to educate them. Oh, it's not one of those kind. It's going to be super fun. We're going to have, you know, kids bouncy houses, we're gonna have lots of puppies, we're gonna have this, that, and the other thing. Okay, so that whole design of what the event is going to look like, becomes an educational piece. So okay, how do we get them into that educational piece? And then you start creating little, what we call opt-ins or invitations to people like, Hey, are you a dog person or cat person? And that can be just a fun thing for people to answer because we all love self identifying, right? We self identify as Oh, yeah, I love the puppies, puppies are awesome. And then we get put into a group. And once we're in that group, it's like, you want to invite people to the puppy fundraising party, because I don't know about you. But I think it's a terrible idea to have kittens and puppies at the fundraiser. Because, you know, they just tend not to get along as well as we do with them. So you could actually have two fundraisers. So you have two different channels of people coming in. And it's not that you're avoiding your cat people at the dog party, because they may actually love both and they want to spend, and they just happen to answer cat at that one point in time. But it's being able to then figure out okay, we have a bunch of, we're going to have a really special day with a bunch of puppies that are coming in, because maybe you just got a whole litter of them or five litters of like, Oh, what are we going to do? So you want to be able to make it as much fun as possible, right? So maybe you put party hats on the puppies, and you get people to click on which one they think is the cutest? And, and you're moving them forward into this realm of okay, hey, we're having this event on this day. And it's going to be awesome, epic and fun. We're going to have some fundraising aspects of it, some games, some, you know, string the tail on a puppy kind of thing. And whatever the thing is, yeah. So that your, from the beginning to the end, you know, how that tour goes for them. But you have to start at the end in mind and go, What is this thing that we're trying to create? And why would people want to show up at it?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, and I love this example, I don't even think you necessarily intended this to happen. But you talked at the beginning about like, you know, repeatable actions. And like an example like, this could even be something that is replicatable as a fundraising, online fundraising, event over and over, like, if you test it out, like just some of the fun engagement, interactive things like all these emails can be automated and you could run, you could say, oh, my gosh, this works really well. Now, I'm going to just duplicate this whole series, and we're going to run it as an online event, even without puppies, because it's, you know, without live puppies, right to reach a bigger audience. So your thing is testing things, seeing what works, and then just doubling down on it.

[Michelle Nedelec] Absolutely. And then once it works for the dogs, you can do it for the cats you can do for lizards you can do for all sorts of fun stuff. And if you have a system that allows you to catch how many people opened each email, how many people clicked on the how many links. A lot of people when they start talking about it, they're usually techies, they get really excited about talking about numbers and I get that. But what it does is if you can see it, it just makes it really easy. If you're going, oh, this is like 50% 50% 50%, zero, hey, something's wrong with the zero. I mean, that's all it is. That's all you want to look at is if it fell, what happened? And then you can look at that email, that link, that landing page, that whatever, and go, Hey, is this giving us the same message all the way through, so that people are getting what they expect? And if they're not, then you change it. And then you run it again. And the next time you go through? It's 50, 50, 50, 25, Okay, we did something right. Yeah. And, making the numbers simple for nuttin. Simple in the essence of why are we looking at numbers, like I can get into a spreadsheet and be, you know, I can delve into it and make it insane. But at the same time, I'm like, why are we looking at the numbers? Like, there's really no point in getting overwhelmed by numbers when you don't have to. When all you're looking for is how do we streamline this? How do we make it more effective? And, and how do we make it so that the effort we're putting into this is actually useful? Because that's really what it comes down to is we can be you know, taking a toothbrush to the baseboards, trying to make them clean. But if nobody's ever seeing them, then that's not helping build our business.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] 100%. Well, and I think this example is also genius, in that I think a lot of people hesitate from automation also, because it becomes impersonal. The fear is, well, if I automate all my emails, if I automate this campaign, if I automate this, then it's impersonal and people are going to know it's an automation. But I think what the example you just said kind of proves that wrong because you can really create some of those engaging things and segment people in ways that it's personal to them without you having to do all of that work.

[Michelle Nedelec] Exactly. And it brings back to, if you've done them three times, it's the same. You don't know that that is not the first time you said it that way. But if it's worked, keep saying it. And when you want to use that spontaneity is in questions that you haven't got before, and can automation be done wrong? Yes, we've all seen it. I mean, we've all gone to Facebook pages where we go to ask a question. It’s like, hey, our hours of operation are nine to five. Right? Well, I didn't ask you. So why are you telling me that? Whereas if it's an inviting thing like, Hey, welcome to the page, any questions you have that I can answer, and they go, what are your hours of operation? You go, Oh, yeah, they're nine to five, awesome, you've still done automation, but it's done in a way that carries the conversation, which brings us back to start with the end in mind. And then take your clients journey through that, and test it so that you can see what it feels like. And if it doesn't feel good to you then change it. So that it feels awesome and amazing. And if you can't figure out a way to make it feel awesome and amazing. Talk to somebody who does that. Because odds are pretty good. They know how to make it feel awesome and amazing. And they'll say things like well, don't say it this way. Say something like how would you normally answer a friend that says, Hey, do you have some more stuff? And then say it in your words and go oh, yeah, why didn't I think of that? Because we think we have to say it in a way that's automated, as opposed to saying it in the way that we would say it.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I think that's a good point too, also in like automation to me, it's kind of like a puzzle. Like when you think about a donor journey. There's certain pieces that aren't necessarily automated, right? Like you can't automate a phone call or automate a card, a handwritten card, but you can automate a workflow that notifies you that you need to write that card. So I think we can build in all that personality to some of those automations in our workflows, but then still be much more effective and save time, because we're not having to like manually process like what's happening on a day to day.

[Michelle Nedelec] Well, and it's funny, you should say that because you actually can automate phone calls without them sounding nasty and cheesy. So it's, and again, it comes back to if you're gonna say the same three things three times, then stop it, and record it and figure out a way that makes it not sound cheesy and automated. And, or if it's, if there's no way that you can get around it, and it goes Hey Sami, there was no way we could get around this, we needed to send this message out to 100 people, so I hope you don't get offended. And we got this event coming up. It's gonna be epic and cool. And I really hope that you can show up there. So yeah, and there's ways that you can actually take your list and put the whole list into that conversation so that Sami gets her message, Michelle gets her message, David gets his message. And it sounds automated without being automated. I mean, it sounds like you're included, but it is still automated. And you're telling them it's automated. And you can do the same thing, Send Out Cards has a fantastic program that integrates super well with keep Max classic. And it allows you to be able to, especially if you have an event, like you have everybody showed up at the fundraiser, and you want to send them a thank you note saying, you know, thank you, your contribution to being there at the event was fantastic and awesome. We appreciate it immensely. And we hope that you're joining us for more events, you can absolutely send that out to 100 people, and it still feels fantastic and awesome. So it goes back to, if you're going to do it three times, automate it. If you're doing it for the first time, and it's a unique conversation, like somebody calls up and says, Hey, you know, I'm just wondering, I'm bringing my paycheck, how much money should I bring in? You're probably not going to answer that question a whole lot. Right? So then you have a unique conversation with them. And that's where your people come in. That's why you want to hire people, just because people are spontaneous. People are creative, people are kind of that messy throw paint in the wall kind of thing. And that's where you want to bring them. It's not into the, you know, we just need to have this done 20 times, because that's when people screw up.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, I think that's a critical conversation right now too, in how in conversations we've been having with clients and in workforce issues, is like, you know, instead of maybe thinking about, we need to hire XYZ, maybe now is the perfect time to audit. Like you're saying, what are the things that we're doing repeatedly? And how can we maybe pull some of that stuff off into an automated situation so that then our existing team can have more bandwidth and stuff, right?

[Michelle Nedelec] You think about accounts receivable or something, so you have like a monthly membership and somebody's credit card, you know, changes expiry days, or it got compromised, so they got a new card. Nobody on the planet likes making that call going, Hey, your credit card didn't go through. And nobody wants to get that call from somebody to have to admit like, hey, yeah, I ran over. Sorry, you're gonna have to run it through again. Nobody likes having that conversation on the planet. So you get a computer system to do it and send out an email that says, Hey, we noticed that your transaction didn't go through. We can try again, or you can click here to update your credit card information, right, we want that to be automated, nobody wants to have that conversation. But by doing that, if you have a membership site, you can not only save yourself $500 a month, but for the amount of time it wastes having an account receivable person having to go and make those calls. So you've already justified the cost of your software on that one. Two, it allows you to not lose accounts receivable, because I don't know of a company out there that doesn't have accounts owing because nobody wants to make calls and go, Hey, we haven't charged you in three months, we kind of have to charge you for those three months. And, you know, nobody wants to have those conversations. So to be able to justify that cost right there. If you have a monthly membership, you should have automation taking place in that and not having people take care of that.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So kind of the last question, because there's so many good things here. I don't want to overwhelm people too much. But I wanted to, you know, like, what is? So we talked about starting from the end and working your way forward. But then your, you know, accounts receivable example is great as well. So is it something like how do you tell organizations to maybe start to do an audit of what are some of their repeated tasks? Because I do think sometimes we just do them. We don't even realize we've done them so many times, because it's just so much part of our day to day. So how might we audit our tasks to figure out what can be automated?

[Michelle Nedelec] Yeah, absolutely. So when I used to do executive coaching, I used to get all of my clients to put a piece of paper down next to them. That's when we used paper. Write down your day, as you're changing as you're doing things. And it might be you know, nine o'clock, I'm doing emails and you go and do emails, and then you get up and go get a coffee, okay, 10 o'clock, got a coffee, you come back to your desk, 10:01 started working on, blah. And just notice all the things that are just in general blocks like that. And then in a little while, and it's usually by the afternoon, it's not that long afterwards that you start to know, okay, that's too generalized, it's not telling me what I need to do. And what I'm doing is actually this and then you start to get more specific on what it is you're doing. And then you start to get frustrated, because you've done it three times, you're like, Okay, I need to automate this, I need to duplicate that I need to delegate that, I need to quit, that's how you can start identifying because I'd get them to put four words at the top, and it was trying to remember what it was, you either need to delete it, because it's not getting anywhere, you need to delegate it, you need to duplicate it. And there was one other one, I forgot what it was. But basically, it's being able to get somebody else to do it. Because you can pay somebody less than you can basically make in an hour. So it's not about, a lot of people also get there and kind of do the hair on the back stands up because like, oh, nobody's less than me and blah blah blah. I get that. But not everybody's as competent as you are in a certain area. So you might be super good at fundraising, you might be super good at getting people to adopt puppies, you might be super good at whatever. And that skill, you haven't quite figured out how to duplicate or replicate yet. But you could get somebody to file your paperwork that's on your desk or send a you know, take the business cards and put them into the software system, or whatever it is. And you can hire them for, you know, 10-15 bucks an hour, whereas you can make 25 $50 an hour. And it doesn't have to be that huge of a gap. It just has to be noticeable gap.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Right? Like what are the things that only you can do?

[Michelle Nedelec] And truthfully, there isn't anything that only you can do. We like to think that that's the way it's going because we are kind of the visionary of the company. So that's totally cool. Be the visionary of the company, though you can delegate everything else. And when you start to think I can delegate everything else, it starts to become really fun, because that means you get to do whatever you want to do. So if what you want to do in a day is go around and pet puppies and make them happy and make them not feel like they're in little cages, then you can go and do that because somebody else is taking care of the operation, somebody else is taking care of the fundraising plan, somebody else is taking care of all of the other things. And you get to be the voice of the company and do videos and all that kind of fun stuff, which then gives the company personality. And that is a super valuable skill to be able to be willing to be on video and talk to people about how cute the puppies are or whatever.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] For example, I mean, I'm the host of this podcast, it'd be weird if somebody else showed up and was interviewing you like that was weird, but I don't need to then do the editing of the audio and do the transcripts, like the show notes, right? Like all of that stuff we have like in a system that's halfway automated. So Yeah, I think that's great. And then I think the other piece that I'm curious for your thoughts on with this is, you know, when you have a team and everybody kind of, if you challenge everybody to kind of do this for a few days, like, have you seen major aha moments at how many times a task is being replicated across multiple people, and like how you can even kind of automate and streamline things in that?

[Michelle Nedelec] Absolutely. So we work with everybody from solopreneurs, up to multi million dollar companies. And it becomes even more obvious in multimillion dollar companies. Because if they have silos of data, as we call them, each, the sales department has a software they use, accounting has a software that they use, marketing has a piece of software they use, and then all of a sudden, they're having to talk to each other and go, Hey, what do you know about you know, Mark Smith, what do you know about this? And, and they're having to manually update that data, it becomes paramount how much time is being wasted. Just unnecessary things are happening that could be manipulated. Now, I don't know if I quite answered that question. I was going somewhere with it, and all of a sudden, I lost where I was going.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] No, I think he did. Because it's, you know, it's just how do we, like, we can get as we grow and scale, I think some things can get lost in the shuffle. And we kind of forget who's doing what, and then you just keep doing it. And then you just keep doing it. And then you just keep doing it. And all sudden you're like, why are we doing all of these things? Where did we start from? So I think people can get mixed up because you're so focused on growth and scale.

[Michelle Nedelec] Absolutely. And one of the fun things that can, Oh, how many times do they replicate something? Yeah. So when we asked them, you know, how often do you do this? And then like, oh, all day, that's what I do. And it's like manually? Yeah, we manually move data. It's like, you have computer systems for that. That's why you have computer systems. And so it's a matter of just kind of educating them on how to be able to use those things, and how to use them right. The biggest thing we see with solopreneurs, and being able to build their business is oftentimes they'll take three months to do what somebody else that skilled could do in 15 minutes an hour. So they'll be like, oh, yeah, I just have to build my site, and I'm gonna build it on Wix. It's like, wow, you could, and it'll take three months to figure it out and how to do it. And is it easy? Yes. And does it look cute in the end? Yes. But is it functional in the end? No, because you start having to use a Gmail account, because you can’t get a, you know, at your business name.com and all sorts of things. So we go and people will have spent months on their site, figuring it out, we will take that site, within the week, we'll replicate it on a WordPress site, and put it in the proper forms and things like that. So now they can make money off of their site. Whereas before they couldn't make money off their site. And they took three months into the business. And and and. So you start to see, when the owner or the leader, the visionary of the company is wasting time doing things, learning how to do them, they're stopping their growth, like, dead stop. Whereas when they can delegate to us and say, Hey, I need to have this done. We have an event coming up, I'd like to do it, you know, maybe in six months, it's like, well, why in six months? Well, I think that's how long it's gonna take us to get there. And we can do that, you know, at the end of this month. Would that make sense? If you know, if we can get all of those things done that you were going to do in six months, we can get them all done in one month, would it make sense to do it at the end of the month? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay, great. Events gonna happen at the end of month, make this happen. And then we go and do all the tech, we do the promotions, we do the the advertising, we do the social media posts, everything, the graphics, everything is getting done and you're creating the activity and the bubble, the conversation, people are getting excited about because now it's not happening in six months, which nobody gets excited about. But it's happening at the end of this month, which everybody gets excited about. And everybody loves a party. So you should figure out a way to incorporate parties into your business.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Key takeaway from this episode, incorporate ways to have parties in your business. No, I think that is so good. And, Michelle, I just love like the whole thinking of like, how do we reverse engineer what the end result is going to be? And then how can we take a look at the tech tools that we might need, and automation we might need to say like to kind of justify the monetization of it and the fact that we need to factor in our time and the dollars that we could be generating versus the DIY piece. Michelle, if you wanted to give people kind of one last takeaway about how automation can kind of help them grow and scale their business, like what piece of advice would you give businesses?

[Michelle Nedelec] The piece of advice I would give you is to figure out what you want to create in your business and then figure out the software that can make that happen, as opposed to looking at a piece of software going, Oh that’s really pretty, can we make that work in our business? Because that's a terrible way to do it. Don't do it that way. Figure out what you want to do in your business and how you want it to operate and then figure out what can make that happen for you. Because I guarantee you it's out there, it is, you just have to be able to figure out, kind of have a vision of what that is. And then when you're talking to people go, Hey, this is one I want to create, can you help me make it? And if they say, well, sort of, that’s not your person. Okay, do you know somebody who can? And just keep door knocking until you find the person that goes, Yeah, absolutely, we can do that. And here's three other people that we've done it for. Talk to those three other people, ask more questions. How do you spend money? That's my big one. Talk to those people. This is what I want to do. Do you think these guys can do it? Yes. Great. Okay. Now let's look at the possibility of going with them. The problem is most people spend money on things that they don't really know how to do the job. And you don't need to know how they do their job, you need to know what you want. It's like I tell people, when they go to a lawyer, everybody thinks the lawyer is gonna solve their problem. A lawyer's job is not to solve your problem. A lawyer's job is to make happen what you will see happening. And how do you do that in a legal and ethical sort of way, within the confines? So you need to have the vision, you bring it to them, and then they make it happen.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Perfect. Well, Michelle, people want to learn more from you and learn more about you, how do they do that?

[Michelle Nedelec] We have some fun assessments and quizzes and all sorts of fun stuff going on in the website. So you can go to awarenessstrategies.com. And you can go to the website audit, you can go to the business assessment, you can go to the marketing assessment, the branding assessment, we have a whole ton of them for you. So whatever you think might be your concern in business, go and do an assessment on it, get some clarity about kind of where you're at, what pieces you might be missing. Why, and that might give you the clarity on why that thing you're doing isn't working is oh, that one, I need that one in place first. Okay, great. And off you go to the races, and you're good, at the end of all of them, you can book discovery calls with us. And we'll help you to actually figure out how to implement it in your own business, whether you have your own team, or you want to do it yourself. Or if you want to look at the possibilities with us, we are good. Anyway, we just want to make sure you're moving forward in your business.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So good. And all of these resources will be linked up in the show notes at thefirstclick.net/175. Michelle, thank you so much for joining me today.

[Michelle Nedelec] Thank you for having me. I had a lot of fun.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Big thank you again to Michelle Nedelec for joining me on this episode. I'm excited to kind of review my systems and kind of see what it is that we're gonna continue to change and grow and what things I can move off my plate. This has been a conversation that I've been having a lot, so I'm sure you've heard it here on this podcast. So I'm excited for another reminder to jump right back into it. I'd really appreciate it if you subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss a single episode. They're all out on Tuesdays, and make sure you leave us a five star review. And if you prefer to watch the video versions of these episodes, you can always find them at thefirstclick.net/YouTube. We'll see you in the next one.